Design
passes through many phases when designing web page or an animation. After the phase
of "What do I want to create and how is it going to look", normally,
the phase of graphic design comes up. Realize what your imagination has produced
on the paper (in this case on the paper of Flash).

It
isn't desirable to mislead us, Flash isn't a program of graphic design, but its power
in this field is almost as great as these programs. We are going to see how use
every drawing tool effectively.

Tools
Bar. Basic Tools.

The Tools
Bar
contains
all necesary Tools for the drawing. Let's see which of them are the most important
and how they are used:

Selection
(arrow) Tool : It
is the most used tool among all. Its main use is to select objects, it allows selecting
the borders of the objects, the fillings (with only one click), the borders (with
double click), zones on our choice... Moreover, its adequate use can save time of our work.

Line
Tool: It
allows creating straight lines in a quick way. The lines are created as in any program
of drawing. Click and drag to show up a straight line until the desired end point.
Once created, the line can be modified just by placing the cursor near the line: above of
the extremes for dragging them, and in any other part near the straight line to curve
it.

Text
Tool:
It
creates a text in the place where we click. Its properties will be shown in
the next theme.

Oval
Tool:
The Oval
Tool enables
drawing circles or ellipses in a fast and simple way.

Rectangle
Tool: Its
handling is identical to the Oval Tool, they only differ in the
objects they create.

Pencil
Tool:
It allows drawing lines, after being drawn you will be able to edit its shape as you like. The color applied by this
Tool can be modified from the
Color
Mixer Panel or
from the subpanel Colors
that
is in the
Tool
Bar.

Brush
Tool: Its
functionality is equivalent to the pencil, but its stroke is much more thicker. It
is usually useed for fills. We can modify its thickness and stroke shape.

Paint
Bucket Tool: It
lets you apply fillings to the created objects. Many other programs
of drawing don't allow to apply fillings if a border doesn’t limit the zone, it does.
The color applied by this Tool can be modified from the
Colors
Mixer Panel or
from the subpanel Colors
that
are in the Tool
Bar.

Eraser
Tool:
It
works like the Brush Tool. Nevertheless its function is to erase everything what
"it draws".

Tools
Bar. Advanced Tools.

Lasso
Tool:
Its
function is complementary to the
Arrow
Tool,
since it can select any object in a free way (the Arrow Tool can only select objects
or rectangular or square zones). In counterpart, the
Lasso
Tool can't
select fillings nor objects (if we don’t make the selection by hand).

By
selecting this Tool, the following images appear on the Options Panel : This
is the Magic Wand Tool,
which is so popular in other programs. It lets you make selections according
to the objects color. The third option you have is the following:
It
allows you to select polygon shapes.

Pen
Tool: creates
polygons (and moreover straight lines, rectangles...) in a simple way. Many people
find this tool to be complicated, although it's one of the most powerful tools that
Flash provides. Its use consists in clicking on the places that we want to define
as vertices of the polygons. In order to create
curves, indicate the anchor points, which limit curvature, and then drag
the tangent on them.

Subselection
Tool: This
Tool complements the
Pen
Tool,
as far as it lets us move or adjust the vertices that make up the objects created
by the above mentioned tool.

Ink
Bottle Tool: It
is used to change quickly the color of a stroke. It is applied to objects with
borders, changes the color of the boundary with one click in the Colors
Mixer Panel.

Eyedroppers
Tool: Its
mission is to "Capture" colors to use them afterwards. To see how it works,
we advice you to see the following animation:

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